Connecting the world led to gradually increasing monoculture. Subtle at first, and Great Firewalls definitely slowed the process down. But it was inevitable. Technology spread, network effects in overdrive, if you weren’t wired in you were cut out. And if you were wired in then, well, that was your culture.

A lot of value was lost.

Ideologies fell left and right, until only the one remained. A single worldview worldwide. This converging of reward functions boosted progress to unforeseen heights. When everyone agrees on what’s best, there’s nothing left but to do it.

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Twenty years ago, there was talk of “the end of history,” and it was about this same idea. Slowly, we’d become a single world community, and it was just a matter of smoothing out the edges. 9/11 kind of changed that trend, at least in the time since then.

But despite the constant tension we hear about between the right and left everywhere, it does seem like the homogenizing continues, in the long run.